This comprehensive article regarding the birth of automobile transportation has been scanned from October 1923 National Geographic magazine. It is very long and contains many photos so please be patient while the page loads. If you find this article anywhere else on the Internet, it came from us.
The National Geographic does not even have this digital version.
FROM: Vol. XLIV, No. 4 October 1923 issue The National Geographic Magazine THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY An American Art That Has Revolutionized Methods in Manufacturing and Transformed Transportation By WILLIAM JOSEPH SHOWALTER The following article presents a careful survey of the economic consequences of the development of the motor vehicle and a layman's impressions of the highly technical automobile manufacturing industry. The latter were gained during months of observation and inspection in the largest automobile factories in America, under the guidance of automotive engineers and manufacturing superintendents.
The EDITOR
With thirteen million motor cars and trucks now running on the roads of the United States, and with the annual demand for new ones in excess of three millions, America is both literally and figuratively "stepping on the gas" in the making of transportation history.
A quarter of a century has brought a development in the automobile industry that has outrun the dreamers, confounded the prophets, and amazed the world.
In 1898 there was one car in operation for every eighteen thousand people, each of them a hybrid creation secured by crossing a bicycle with a buggy, and in-stalling in the product a noise, sputtering little engine that startled the people in the streets and sent the horses on the high-ways into panic.
To-day there is one motor vehicle to every eight people, and the worst of them is a marvel of silence and service as cornpared with the best of its early predecessors.
Thirteen million motor cars! Who can visualize them! Five for every freight and passenger car on all the railroads of the United States! Enough to carry half the people of America in a single caravan!
The Lincoln Highway, from the banks of the Hudson to the Golden Gate, is 3,305 miles long. To put them all on that highway, even in traffic-jam formation, would require that it be widened so that fifteen cars could stand abreast!